Gary Lee Weinrib (Geddy Lee) is a big baseball fan and he collects baseball memorabilia. His parents are holocaust survivors – his mother was imprisoned in Bergen-Belsen and his father was in Dachau.
Almost 9½ years ago, Sampiro started a competition at SDMB with a post that read in part:
Despite the part of the post I’ve reddened, the competition has continued for more than nine years. Memorabilia of Trivial Dominoes might be available in a store near you.
Only the Top Fifteen posters will receive awards for persistence if/when the thread ends. Here are the current standings. The Top Fifteen List seldom changes nowadays, as you can see from the 40 months-ago standings which I show in parentheses.
User Name Posts
1. (2) Bullitt 6,680
2. (1) Elendil’s Heir 5,483
3. (3) ElvisL1ves 4,349
4. (5) Northern Piper 2,536
5. (4) RealityChuck 2,330
6. (10) Annie-Xmas 2,239
7. (17) The Stainless Steel Rat 1,781
8. (12) jtur88 1,700
9. (6) Sampiro 1,456
10. (14?) gkster 1,423
11. (7) Siam Sam 1,339
12. (8) Cunctator 1,332
13. (9) astorian 1,242
14. (11) Sternvogel 981
15. (15?) septimus 713
16. (?) Railer13 711
17. (13) Kent Clark 605
18. (?) kenobi 65 481
19. (?) ozziemaland 426
20. (?) Prof. Pepperwinkle 391
In addition to the Top Fifteen, I show the top also-rans. Is it time to ready the firecrackers and champagne in case the current #15 is dethroned? 
(I’ve never seen the thread drop off of Page 1, either.)
Dachau is considered to have been the first concentration camp built by Germany. The idea was actually originated by Kitchener in South Africa as part of Britain’s strategy to subdue the Boers. Over 27,000 Boers, half of whom were children, died in the camps while the British Army executed “Scorched Earth” tactics to deny support for the guerrillas.
The first verse of Tom Paxton’s “We Did’t Know,” talks about the German concentration camps and the people who “didn’t know”:
We didn’t know said the Burgomeister,
About the camps on the edge of town.
It was Hitler and his crew,
That tore the German nation down.
We saw the cattle cars it’s true,
And maybe they carried a Jew or two.
They woke us up as they rattled through,
But what did you expect me to do?
The second verse covers the race riots of the 1960’s, and the third verse talks about the Vietnam War atrocities. All the while, the singer chants the universal excuse:
We didn’t know at all,
We didn’t see a thing.
You can’t hold us to blame,
What could we do?
It was a terrible shame,
But we can’t bear the blame.
Oh no, not us, we didn’t know
(Getting ever closer to the coveted Top 15…)
In play: The Vietnam War is a 10-part documentary series written by Geoffrey Ward and produced and directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. The series first aired on PBS in 2017. The series features interviews with 79 witnesses, none of which are, as Burns put it, “historians or other expert talking heads”,
Rotten Tomatoes gave the series an approval rating of 98%.
Although the song never became a hit, Tom Paxton’s “Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation” was one of the first songs to accuse the president of the United States of lying about the Vietnam War. The line “to help save Vietnam from the Vietnamese” captured the disconnect between what Johnson said about America’s involvement in the war and the ideals of American democracy.
Lyndon Johnson told the nation
Have no fear of escalation
I am trying everyone to please
Though it isn’t really war
We’re sending 50,000 more
To help save Vietnam from the Vietnamese
Referring to the 1968 bombing of Ben Tre, AP correspondent Peter Arnett (who later reported on the First Gulf War for NBC) quoted an unnamed colonel saying “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”
John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s song “World Without Love” is the biggest hit they wrote that was not released by The Beatles. It became the first and biggest hit for Peter & Gordon. Peter Asher, brother of Paul’s girlfriend Jane Asher, was (like his sister) a child actor and went on to be a successful musician and was also the manager of James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt.
The song was meant to be recorded by The Beatles, but that plan was vetoed by John Lennon. Asher explained: “John thought the first line ‘Please lock me away’ was laughable.”
The song “Different Drum” was written by Michael Nesmith in 1965 and first recorded by the northern bluegrass band the Greenbriar Boys and included on their 1966 album, Better Late than Never!. Nesmith offered the song to the Monkees, but the producers of the TV show, who had wide control over the group’s musical output early on, turned him down.
The most popular version of the song was recorded in 1967 recorded by the Stone Poneys featuring Linda Ronstadt. In 1972, Nesmith recorded his own version of his song.
Linda Ronstadt joined Johnny Cash, Roy Clark and Foster Brooks at the Tennessee State Prison in Nashville in 1974 to record the live album and TV special A Concert Behind Prison Walls. Ronstadt sang a cover of The Eagles’ “Desperado”. It was the fourth and final album of Cash’s conceptual series of live albums recorded before an audience of prison inmates. The other three are, chronologically, At Folsom Prison (1968), At San Quentin (1969) and På Österåker (1973).
Linda Ronstadt’s mother Ruth Mary was the daughter of Lloyd Groff Copeman, a prolific inventor and holder of many patents. Copeman, with nearly 700 patents to his name, invented an early form of the toaster, many refrigerator devices, the grease gun, the first electric stove, and an early form of the microwave oven. His flexible rubber ice cube tray earned him millions of dollars in royalties
Berkeley Systems’ 1989 (Mac) and 1991 (Windows) After Dark 2.0 screensaver included the infamous Flying Toasters. A slider in the Flying Toasters module enabled users to adjust the toast’s darkness and an updated Flying Toasters Pro module added a choice of music—Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries or a flying toaster anthem with optional karaoke lyrics.
Sierra Interactive and Berkeley Systems released After Dark Games in 1998 for the Macintosh and Windows platforms, which contained several games modeled after their previously released screensavers. These games included Mowin’ Maniac (a Pac-Man clone based on the “Mowin’ Man” and “Mowin’ Boris” modules); Roof Rats (similar to SameGame and variants); Solitaire (After Dark themed); Toaster Run (a 3D adventure game featuring several After Dark Characters, including the Flying Toaster); Zapper (a trivia game); Hula Girl (an endless 2D platforming game based on the “Hula Twins” module from After Dark 4.0); two word scramble games – Bad Dog 911 (based on the “Bad Dog” modules) and Fish Shtix (based on the “Fish” modules, mainly “Fish World”); Foggy Boxes (a Dots and Boxes game based on the “Messages 4.0” module); MooShu Tiles (a Mahjong-like game featuring many After Dark characters throughout the years); and Rodger Dodger. “Rodger Dodger” had been a module several years earlier, but also a playable game inside the module. Not much was changed from the module, except some of the music and most of the level set-ups. Many fans liked the games, but some felt it lacked games based on more fitting modules, such as “Daredevil Dan”, “Lunatic Fringe” (which was a game inside its module, like “Rodger Dodger”), and the After Dark re-working of “Rock, Paper Scissors” (also a game inside its module).
The phrase “lunatic fringe”, meaning extremists and fanatics, was popularized by Theodore Roosevelt. The phrase previously referred to a hairstyle (with bangs across the forehead) that was frowned on by the older generation, in the 1870s and 80s.
In Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Laura’s mother Caroline reluctantly gives permission that Laura cuts her hair so that she has bangs. She says Laura did a good job, although she does refer to them as a “lunatic fringe”.
The handwritten manuscript of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little Town on the Prairie is the heart of the Pomona Public Library’s Laura Ingalls Wilder Collection. The donation resulted from the friendship between Mrs. Wilder and Miss Clara Webber, the Pomona Public Library’s children’s librarian from 1948-1970. Mrs. Wilder gave the manuscript to the library in 1950 when the previous library building was remodeled and rededicated. The children’s room was named the - Laura Ingalls Wilder Room - at that time.
Growing up in Pomona, California in the 50’s and 60’s, I remember Miss Webber in the old library, so there is only two degrees of separation between myself and Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Laura Ingalls Wilder was a descendant of the Delano family, the ancestral family of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She was also a third cousin once removed of President Ulysses S. Grant.
Thanks for the tally, septimus. Clearly I need to get a life (but this is, and has been, so much fun!)
In play:
President Abraham Lincoln invited Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and his wife to attend a performance of the farce Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865, but Grant declined, in part because Julia Grant couldn’t stand Mrs. Lincoln.
Presidents Lincoln and Fillmore were third cousins thrice removed. Presidents van Buren and Teddy Roosevelt were also third cousins thrice removed. President Franklin Roosevelt had a similar consanguinity (though 4th cousin once removed) with another President, but it wasn’t Teddy – it was President Grant.
While President John Quincy Adams pronounced his middle names “kwin-cee” the Massachusetts town named after him is pronounced KWIN-zee,"
Peritonsillar abscess is also referred to as “quinsy”, “quincy”, or “quinsey”, which are anglicised versions of the French word esquinancie. Before antibiotics, it was easily fatal, with pus building up behind a tonsil and complications like sepsis setting in.